Ethics: Buchanan forms inaccurate

The House Ethics Committee announced on Tuesday that GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan had filed inaccurate financial forms, but it said the omissions were inadvertant and no different from the “hundreds or thousands of errors” it sees each year in these reports.

The move by Ethics is a boost for the Florida Republican. Buchanan still remains under investigation by the secretive congressional panel and the Justice Department over allegations that he improperly reimbursed donors to his congressional campaigns and asked a former business partner to lie about Buchanan’s role in those payments.

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But Buchanan has strongly denied the claims by his former business partner, Sam Kazran, and Buchanan’s defense team notes the Federal Election Commission closed its own investigation into the allegations. Kazran was sued by the FEC and agreed to pay $5,500 in fines for improperly funneling money to Buchanan’s 2006 and 2008 campaigns.

The Office of Congressional Ethics, the independent ethics watchdog, found that Buchanan failed to disclose 17 positions he held in corporations or other private entities in his 2007-10 disclosure reports, as well as at least $15,000 in income. Buchanan, a car dealer, is one of the richest members of Congress, with a net worth of at least $44 million.

OCE recommended that the Ethics Committee, which has the final say in such matters, create a special investigative panel to look into the issue.

But the Ethics Committee announced in February that it would not take such a step, although it said the Buchanan case remained under review.

On Tuesday, Reps. Jo Bonner (R-Ala.) and Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), the chairman and ranking member on Ethics, said that they were ending that review.

“The committee has determined that Representative Buchanan did accurately report all the positions or ownership interests he held with several entities on his Financial Disclosure Statements from 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, and he did not accurately report certain income from those same entities in the same years,” Bonner and Sanchez said in a statement. “However, the committee found no evidence that the errors were knowing and willful and unanimously determined that the errors were not substantively different from the hundreds or thousands of errors corrected by amendments at the requirement of the Committee every year.”

Bonner and Sanchez added: “In fact, between 30% and 50% of all Financial Disclosure Statements reviewed by the committee each year contain errors or omissions. Such errors and omissions are not uncommon and are typically corrected through amendment to Financial Disclosure Statement, and do not involve any further committee action.”

Buchanan has filed amendments to his disclosure reports for those four years.